One of New Zealand’s richest businessmen has been falsely accused of links to Russian spies and criminals. Alex Spence reports on how the smear claims against Christopher Chandler started and what the Kiwi billionaire had to do to defend his reputation
For several decades as one of New Zealand’s wealthiest businessmen, Christopher Chandler went out of his way to avoid publicity. He was rarely mentioned even in the financial press. He never gave interviews.
But in 2018 the financier was thrust into a media frenzy when he was accused by MPs in the British Parliament of spying and laundering money for powerful Russian politicians and organised criminals.
Chandler, 63, adamantly denied the allegations and said they were gravely damaging to his reputation and business – and “gutting” to him personally.
Now, five years later, Chandler may be on the brink of vindication after a long legal battle in the US courts against the man he alleges was ultimately responsible.
In April, a libel case brought by Chandler against Donald Berlin, an American private investigator, is scheduled to go to trial in Washington, DC. The judge hearing the case has already ruled, in September, that the allegations were false and libellous. A jury will now decide whether Chandler is entitled to recover any damages. He is seeking around $10 million.
Chandler is expected to testify at the trial about the impact the allegations have had on him professionally and personally, in what would be one of only a handful of times he has spoken publicly about his affairs.
In pre-trial depositions, Chandler has said that the consequences of being accused of spying and criminal activity have been profound, according to court filings reviewed by the Herald.
“The nature of my business and also of my personal life is such that I place a very, very high value on integrity,” he said in a deposition in 2021, which has not previously been reported. “In the investment community, your reputation is the foundation of your business…
“And so when somebody comes along and creates a fiction around your identity which has no relationship whatsoever to who you are and casts the most malicious allegations without evidence, then the emotional stress is more than significant. It’s gutting.”
Chandler did not respond to a request for comment made through his lawyer.
Chandler’s investment company Legatum is based in Dubai but he also has significant interests in London, including a think tank and a stake in GB News, a right-wing broadcaster. His older brother, Richard, controls a separate investment group, Clermont, in Singapore and is estimated by Forbes to have a net worth of $US2.9 billion ($4.63b)
The brothers grew up in Hamilton, where their family owned an upmarket department store, Chandler House. After Christopher did a law degree at the University of Auckland, the brothers took over the family business. In 1986, they sold it for $10 million and moved to Monaco.
From their base in Europe, the brothers built a substantial fortune, mostly by investing in emerging markets in Asia and Eastern Europe. At one point, they owned a significant holding in Gazprom, the giant Russian energy company. They deliberately kept a low profile – “I value my privacy,” Chandler said in a deposition – but their success nevertheless drew attention from people in Monaco.
In 2003, an American author and journalist named Robert Eringer was acting as an intelligence adviser to Prince Albert II. Eringer hired Berlin, the private investigator, who was based in Washington, DC, to produce a background report on the Chandler brothers. Eringer added his own information and provided a report to the Prince the following year.
The document was explosive, portraying the Chandlers as “elusive, clandestine, and mysterious” and accusing them of involvement in espionage activities and a massive money laundering scheme linked to Russian organised crime. It claimed they had connections that went all the way to the top of President Vladimir Putin’s Government, providing a high level of political protection.
Chandler has said he first learned about the existence of these allegations in 2010, when they emerged in a legal dispute between Eringer and Prince Albert. He was alerted by his former boat captain. Chandler was surprised and upset, according to legal filings in the libel case: “Sleepless nights. Loss of appetite.”
By this time, Christopher and Richard had split their business interests and Richard had moved to Asia. Chandler emailed his brother in January 2010 to alert him to the existence of Eringer’s report, describing it as like reading “a trashy dime novel”.
“Pity to see this type of unfounded assertion/allegation in a court filing,” Chandler told his brother. “Not good for our reputation, even though we know it to be false. Makes me wonder if we should sue this guy (Robert Eringer) to force him to prove the comment or retract it.”
But the document disappeared for several years, until it started circulating among journalists in London in late 2017.
At that time, British politics was bitterly divided because of Brexit. Chandler’s think tank in London, the Legatum Institute, was an influential voice in the debate; one of its senior figures was close to Conservative MPs who fervently supported leaving the European Union. There was also heightened anxiety that Russia was secretly trying to influence the political process on both sides of the Atlantic.
In that environment, the allegation that the backer of a think tank associated with a hard Brexit was a Russian spy was incendiary.
In May 2018, a Conservative MP, Bob Seely, raised the allegations in the House of Commons, under cover of Parliamentary privilege. Two Labour MPs said they had also seen Eringer’s “dossier” and believed the claims to be genuine.
The allegations caused a media storm. Chandler responded by giving his first-ever media interview, in the Sunday Times, in which he strongly denied the claims.
His legal advisers began looking into the source of the allegations, hiring a team of forensic investigators. Eventually, they focused on Berlin. In 2018, Chandler filed libel proceedings against Berlin in Washington, D.C.
In legal filings, Berlin’s lawyers have stated that he admits his research on the Chandlers was not based on human sources. He has said that he took the information from database searches and passed it on to Eringer making clear that Eringer would have to corroborate it.
A judge initially dismissed Chandler’s claim on the ground that too much time had passed, but that was overturned on appeal. In September, the judge granted a motion by Chandler for summary judgment that the allegations were false and libellous.
Chandler is seeking around $1 million in compensation for damage to his business and expenses and $9 million in punitive damages. Berlin is expected to dispute that his actions caused damage. In legal filings, his lawyers have argued that it was Eringer, not Berlin, who damaged Chandler’s reputation. “The simple fact is he sued the wrong person,” they said. Eringer is not a party to the proceedings.
Berlin’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. The trial is scheduled to begin on April 22.
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